Page:The Author of Beltraffio, Pandora, Georgina's Reasons, The Path of Duty, Four Meetings (Boston, James R. Osgood & Co., 1885).djvu/82

78 with the doctor much sooner than we could have hoped, but we knew, five minutes afterwards, that they arrived too late. Poor little Dolcino was more exquisitely beautiful in death than he had been in life. Mrs. Ambient's grief was frantic; she lost her head and said strange things. As for Mark's—but I will not speak of that. Basta, as he used to say. Miss Ambient kept her secret,—I have already had occasion to say that she had her good points,—but it rankled in her conscience like a guilty participation, and, I imagine, had something to do with her retiring ultimately to a Sisterhood. And, à propos of consciences, the reader is now in a position to judge of my compunction for my effort to convert Mrs. Ambient. I ought to mention that the death of her child in some degree converted her. When the new book came out—it was long delayed—she read it over as a whole, and her husband told me that a few months before her death,—she failed rapidly after losing her son, sank into a consumption, and faded away at Mentone,—during those few supreme weeks she even dipped into Beltraffio.